


We May Not Die Easy

by Blacktablet (Ishamaeli)



Series: People Populate the Darkness (A Sherlock/American Gods Crossover) [3]
Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Kink Meme, M/M, Major Character Death of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 22:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishamaeli/pseuds/Blacktablet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sherlock left with Mr Nancy in January and John was there to see him off, if only because he had woken up to Sherlock’s weight dipping the bed.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	We May Not Die Easy

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers to Sherlock 1x03 and American Gods. Pushing out this final part was harder than I anticipated, so thanks go once more to jacknjill270 for betaing and being encouragingly enthusiastic.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** Sherlock and John in their current incarnation belong to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and BBC. American Gods belongs to Neil Gaiman. The quote at the end is from AG.

I

A new year dawned, and John wept in his sleep.

Faint impressions of the dream skittered across his memory in the morning like frightened spiders when the cupboard is opened and light floods in. They were gone before John could grasp them, hidden somewhere between the memories of fire and chlorine, and he did not want to go there.

John was busy brushing his teeth in the bathroom when a single flicker of the dream blinked back into existence. He dismissed the vague memory of grief in favour of spitting and rinsing and went downstairs to make breakfast.

“What did you dream about?” asked Sherlock later, when they were done.

John looked up from the dishes he was doing. The plates clinked dully against each other in water that was the colour of pollution.

“A funeral,” replied John, at once certain that he was right. “Kind of ominous, don’t you think?”

Sherlock looked at him with pensive eyes and did not say a word.

 

II

Sherlock left with Mr Nancy in January and John was there to see him off, if only because he had woken up to Sherlock’s weight dipping the bed.

“Where are you going?” he had murmured into his pillow, still sleepy after having been roused in the middle of the night. When he had reached for Sherlock and the sheets under his hand felt cool, he had known.

“The Continent,” Sherlock had replied and bent down to tie his shoelaces. “To begin with.”

It was cold for January; the news had warned people about the unusual weather ever since December, advising them to keep warm clothes in their cars just in case and to keep in regular contact with older relatives who lived alone. The heating at 221b had broken once, after which Sherlock had fiddled with it and it had reluctantly sputtered back to life. John had his own suspicions about what Sherlock had done to the system, but since having it in working order meant he didn’t need to sleep with a jumper on, he refrained from asking.

“Took you long enough,” grumbled Mr Nancy. He was standing under a streetlamp, hands deep in the pockets of his yellow coat. “You didn’t change your mind about bringing the boy along, did you?”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that,” replied John and grinned even though his teeth were starting to chatter. “Hello to you, too.”

“If wishes were fishes,” retorted Mr Nancy glibly. He pursed his lips at Sherlock. “Ready to go? Because if you need a minute or two to leave tearful goodbyes, I think we can afford that.”

“Tearful goodbyes,” muttered Sherlock with disdain and shook his head. “Give us a minute.”

“Only a minute?” quipped John as Mr Nancy turned around to inspect a nearby wall, uncharacteristically tactile. “I thought I would be worth at least two.”

Sherlock looked uncomfortable. “I can’t promise you that I’ll come back,” he said without any preamble.

“Bit not good,” whispered John in reply.

“Really?”

“Yeah. People don’t generally like to hear that their loved ones might not return.” He forced a smile. “It usually means that they’re dead.”

“Oh. Of course. Obviously.” Sherlock grimaced. “John, I’m not good at this—“

“No,” agreed John, “you’re not.” And, because there was only one thing to say, he continued. “I want you to come back anyway. Even if it’s inconvenient. Even if—“

Sherlock leant down to kiss him then, to kiss him and to stop him from saying, _Even if you’re dead_ , because neither of them really wanted to think about that.

“Alright, you two, break it up!” Mr Nancy’s irritated voice cut through the air all too soon. “That went past the two-minute mark. We need to go, Sherlock.”

For the first time John realised that what Mr Nancy was saying wasn’t ‘Sherlock,’ either, but he had no time to ask about it. Sherlock squeezed his hand silently and went to join Mr Nancy under the streetlight.

The ice-covered pavement glistened like black lava under their feet.

John’s vision blurred. He cursed under his breath because he had sworn himself that he wouldn’t, and the moment he lifted a hand to rub at his eyes, Sherlock and Mr Nancy were gone.

 

III

John only dreamt of them once.

It was the night that he dreamt of machines that looked like something out of an inventor’s nightmare and age-yellowed bones lying in gathered piles. He dreamt of the desert where all this was, and the ground there was black and smooth like glass.

Sherlock ran towards him in the dream, through the desert with dark shapes chasing – _slithering, crawling_ – after him. The bright yellow of Mr Nancy’s coat flickered like a light, far away in the distance.

“John,” Sherlock-in-the-dream wheezed, and gasped for air. “John, I need you to believe. None of that ‘clap your hands’ nonsense, Barrie was a mad old bat, but—“ Something beyond John’s field of vision caught Sherlock’s attention, causing him to swear profusely. He looked John straight in the eye and opened his mouth.

Then the dark shapes caught up with him.

John woke up to find that he was clenching the sweat drenched bed sheets in his trembling hands. It took him a minute to get them to relax, the leftover terror from the dream lurking at the back of his mind like a starved fox looking for prey. The things Sherlock had left in there cast strange shadows on the walls in their quiet bedroom, and for a moment John thought some of them were moving.

John didn’t sleep any more that night, or the night after that. Eventually exhaustion caught up with him and knocked him out, but – much to his guilty relief – John still did not dream.

 

IV

The bitemark on John’s hip healed at a somewhat slower pace than was normal, but it did heal.

He tracked the passage of time by it; incisor after canine after premolar faded away with weeks, until only an oddly-coloured patch of skin was left, and then that too was gone.

He felt inexplicably naked without the mark.

 

V

It all came to an end in a rush of water at precisely two o’clock in the afternoon on a beautiful summer's day.

 

VI

_There is a shore, and an old ship made of salt-marked wood; the chinks between the planks are caulked tight with tar. The pile of wood gathered on the ship’s deck is dry enough to catch aflame from a breath, and atop the pile lies a body wrapped in a dirty white sheet._

_Two figures are standing side by side on the black sands of the shore. The small fire behind them is leeched of colour in cold starlight; it looks like it might go out at any moment._

_“A ship?” asks the old man. He is hunched over in his yellow coat, and the light of the fire casts long columns of shadows by his side. “Is that the best you could do?”_

_The younger man holds a tree branch to the fire and throws it onto the ship’s deck as soon as it catches. Dry wood lights fast, and in less than a minute the whole ship is engulfed in flames._

_“He made me promise I would,” the man explains. “In return for our help.” The soft glow of him, as if he has swallowed the sun and it continues to shine from the inside, outlines him even in the oppressive pale light from above._

_The old man hums under his breath. “Funny thing, though,” he speaks up after a moment. “I’m not sorry he died.”_

_“He died a good death.”_

_“Yes, but think about what he left behind. Aren’t we supposed to feel compassion for that sort of thing?”_

_“Not us.”_

_The burning ship floats away like a beacon in the darkness._

 

VII

Autumn came early that year.

John had watched the leaves bloom a vibrant green. Now he watched them gradually lose their colour to the increasingly cool nights, and he watched them float to the ground a whole month before the first snow fell. All the while his hope dwindled until all that was left was embers.

It was on a grey, unremarkable day that John came downstairs for a cup of tea and stopped at the sight of Sherlock rifling through his desk in the living room.

John felt a hand close around his heart and squeeze, the small organ fluttering against captivity like a frightened bird. He must have made some kind of a sound then because in that instant, the man turned around.

“John! I didn’t expect you to be at home.” He smiled awkwardly and ran a hand through his hair, the curls near-ginger in sunlight.

John stared.

Sherlock-but-not-Sherlock’s smile faltered quickly. “I was lead to believe that you wouldn’t be opposed to my returning here. Was that incorrect? Because I can, you know,” he made a sweeping gesture with his hand that indicated all of Sherlock’s things strewn about, “if you’d rather…”

“You’re wearing jeans,” said John. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear jeans.”

Sherlock-but-not-quite stopped and looked surprised. “No? No, I shouldn’t think so.”

Tremors ran through John’s left leg as he leant on the doorframe to steady himself. “You’re not Sherlock,” he said and realised that he was both right and wrong. “He didn’t make it, did he?”

“Sherlock Holmes died with Jim Moriarty, yes,” not-Sherlock explained. The barely suppressed irritation in his voice was painfully familiar. “But he didn’t count on you to do what you did.”

“What? I didn’t—”

“You believed in him, John. You believed in _me_.”

And then John understood, and wondered why he hadn’t before.

“If Mr Nancy said your name,” he began, trying to gather his thoughts, “what would I hear, exactly?”

A smile broke across Sherlock’s face. “I knew you’d figure it out,” he murmured. “You’d hear what you’ve always heard. It is my name, you do realise. Now more so than before.”

“So you are… you? But different?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock simply, because there were no straight answers when you dealt with gods.

Then he frowned, and held out his slightly trembling hand. “I see you’ve served in Afghanistan,” he said in a formal manner, anticipation clear in his eyes. “Medic?”

John gave a sigh, but he was beginning to smile too. “Yes,” he said and shook hands with Sherlock Holmes once more for the first time.

Then – because it was inevitable, and because the answer would always be the same—

“Yes,” said John again. “To all of it. But I thought you had deduced that by now.”

 

VIII

_Molly Hooper is holding a picture in her hands._

_It’s from a fair she went to a year and a half ago, and it’s the only picture of Jim she has._

_Molly doesn’t like to think of him as ‘Moriarty’. She doesn’t like to think that the kind, slightly awkward man who took her out on dates and kissed her chastely on the cheek and watched Glee with her is the same man who turned out to be a criminal and put people’s lives in danger._

_She refuses to believe that._

 

 

 

_“We may not die easy and we sure as hell don't die well, but we can die. If we're still loved and remembered, something else a whole lot like us comes along and takes our place and the whole damn thing starts all over again.”_


End file.
